Aliyev Declared Azerbaijan Winner : Caucasus: He takes 98.8% of vote in election marred by irregularities. But shattered nation’s support for ex-KGB figure seems genuine and broad.

Geidar Aliyev, a former KGB general, was acclaimed as the new president of Azerbaijan on Thursday, setting the Caspian Sea republic on a firmly pro-Russian course after an election that set a new bizarre standard for democracy in the former Soviet Union.

Vows to make every Azerbaijani a millionaire failed to win Aliyev’s two opponents even 1% support between them. Aliyev won 98.8% of almost 4 million votes cast in addition to printed odes to this nominally Muslim country’s 70-year-old former Communist chief as the nation’s savior.

Turnout was 97.6%, an official statement by the electoral commission said.

That figure contradicted reports by more than 30 foreign observers of Sunday’s presidential poll. They saw empty polling stations, fathers voting for whole families and ballot-box stuffing. State media massively favored Aliyev, opposition activists were jailed and censorship still harasses Azerbaijan’s independent press.

One fiercely pro-Aliyev official running a polling station became so enthusiastic that he even offered a British observer an honorary vote. When the observer declined, the official simply filled the slip out for him--in favor of Aliyev--and stuffed it in the ballot box with a flourish.

There was no question, however, about Aliyev’s appeal, especially in contrast to his opponents’.

Azerbaijan has been desperate for a dose of firm rule after: the loss of about 20% of its territory to Armenians; the displacement of at least one in 10 of its population by the war, and a general, post-Soviet economic collapse.

“There were masses of technical irregularities, but it was also a massive pro-Aliyev movement. He has managed to sell himself as the best hope for Azerbaijan,” one Western diplomat said.

The United States and other Western countries are likely to recognize Aliyev as president after his inauguration next Sunday.

There were few regrets for former President Abulfez Elchibey, who was democratically elected 16 months ago with 60% of the vote and a 70% turnout. The pro-American, pro-Turkish Elchibey fled the capital, Baku, after failing to face down a military rebellion in June. The pro-Russian Aliyev has run the potentially oil-rich Caucasian country since then.

“There is a socialist nostalgia among Azerbaijanis. The people believe that Aliyev will bring the price of bread down, things like that. In a few months, they will see he has cheated them,” said Ibrahim Ibrahimov, the bitter leader of the opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front in Elchibey’s absence.

But a new sense of purpose has invested Baku since June. Some diplomats believe that Aliyev will deliver on promises to honor the free market and sign a major Caspian Sea offshore oil production-sharing agreement with a Western consortium led by British Petroleum and including American firms such as Amoco, Unocal, Pennzoil and McDermott.

In city streets, long-absent builders can be seen resuming work on old construction projects. Lights burn at ministries until the small hours of the morning. Officials have become more officious.

“That’s just the problem,” one diplomat said. “Everybody is busy, but nobody’s doing anything. You can’t be sure of appointments. People are only working for fear of dismissal. This is the way of doing things that brought down the Soviet Union.”

Private banks and companies, though, are being starved of money. The only signs of Aliyev’s promised political pluralism are the pictures of him on election posters around town: here a patriarch in a suit, there brandishing his famous clenched-teeth smile, and in a nod to his support from the Soviet-nurtured Azerbaijani intellectual elite, with arms folded and brooding like an aging film director in a black turtleneck sweater.